


Because something like home

by undermybreath



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, i don't even know what this is tbh, time travel nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 21:04:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4494666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/undermybreath/pseuds/undermybreath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>one should assume when starting to read this, that emma and regina are in an established relationship. </p><p>in fact, regina will most likely notice emma being gone before henry does. on a saturday night the kid’s probably too wrapped up in one of his ps4 games to realize the hands on his wall clock are moving, but his mother, oh, she will be aware that the yellow bug emma still drives – even though regina claims it is a traffic hazard – has not rolled into the driveway. </p><p>and she’ll peer out the kitchen window, into the darkness, wiping her hands on the kitchen towel even though really they are dry already and maybe she should stop being so nervous? maybe this is nothing? but then she will worry anyway, because that’s what you do, when there’s been no txt message and no phone call. </p><p>and the person you love hasn’t come home.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Because something like home

**Author's Note:**

> one should assume when starting to read this, that emma and regina are in an established relationship. 
> 
> in fact, regina will most likely notice emma being gone before henry does. on a saturday night the kid’s probably too wrapped up in one of his ps4 games to realize the hands on his wall clock are moving, but his mother, oh, she will be aware that the yellow bug emma still drives – even though regina claims it is a traffic hazard – has not rolled into the driveway. 
> 
> and she’ll peer out the kitchen window, into the darkness, wiping her hands on the kitchen towel even though really they are dry already and maybe she should stop being so nervous? maybe this is nothing? but then she will worry anyway, because that’s what you do, when there’s been no txt message and no phone call. 
> 
> and the person you love hasn’t come home.

Emma somehow time travels. She doesn’t mean to, but these things just have a way of happening to her. It’s unbelievable, really.

 

So, yes, Emma travels back in time and meets Regina.

 

Only this Regina feels broken and is seemingly fighting to convince herself to take another breath under the ever growing weight of her perceived failure; Rumple has granted Snow protection from her and she doesn't see how she'll ever be able to gain the upper hand, to use that hand to squeeze the life out of Snow, because she's untouchable in this world and maybe Regina should just leave this one behind then?

 

Maybe she should drink that liquid in her glass that smells oddly sweet (because of course death would) and throw herself off her balcony and then eventually, after the animals were done and their stomachs filled, the peasants would see the broken bones through the remains of broken skin and realize that underneath it all, she too was a person built out of things that could _break_.

 

And then Emma is somehow there and she's _you can't because there will be someone_. A son. Someone who will see the broken but eventually understand and even before then he will begin to heal and Regina is furious at this deceit and these lies that claw at her, scratching in an attempt to break through. So she sends Emma away but at night, at night she dreams of him, and he's faceless, an entity, _a feeling_ that fills her and makes her feel strangely at home in her own body, within herself.

 

And when she wakes she misses him and it's the absolute worst kind of longing because it has been brought forth by the most awful thing there is in her world; hope. So she seeks Emma out and slowly they bond over the strangest things, like how Emma talks about Regina's future like somehow _she knows_ and somehow _everything is better_ and _less alone in a sea of people_ and why does it feel oddly like home? Like belonging?

 

And then Regina falls in love with this feeling and with this person that is a stranger but not and this means everything will change, because Henry. Henry that exists, but not right now, not yet.

 

So now she must cast a curse not to end Snow's existence but to save her own, and she's in the grand hall when he shows up; his smile so wide that if you reached out and touched his scaly green forehead it would surely topple over and fall on the floor. And he's mocking her because she is furious, _furious_ , because _it didn't work_. It didn't work and now she's killed her father and what kind of person kills their own father?

 

Someone who has no other choice, someone who deserves a chance at something else, she thinks. Something that isn't black; isn't defined by _the absence of_.

 

And he's just grinning now, _grinning_ , because he knows. Of course he does and she doesn't understand it all yet because how could she possibly? How could the Queen know that the person whose heart she crushed is, _was_ , no longer the person she loves the most but that the space in her own heart has been given to a stranger? To _belonging_? To _home_?

 

And when he explains it all, like he's telling a goddamn joke, she finds she can no longer keep standing and as he disappears her knees hit the cold marble floor and her despair fills the room like water flooding and she finds she can't breathe, she cannot cannot cannot. The scream she lets out reverberates off the walls of the empty hall and if someone had heard they never would've believed it had come from her. In fact, painted by her grief, it doesn't even sound human at all.

 

And Emma, sweet sweet _idiot_ Emma, listens and she understands. She accepts because Henry. Because _Regina and Henry_. _Together_. And something like _someone who used to be a stranger_ and _belonging_ and _home_ and as Regina is fighting it with everything she has Emma says that she must. For Henry.

 

And then _I'm sorry Regina._ And _why are **you** sorry?_ Surely that's absurd. Because _this will be so much harder on you_. And it's things like this that make Regina think _idiot_ but also _I understand now_. (Belonging. Home.)

 

So she watches Emma's face as her hand plunges into her chest to grab a heart that's given freely and Emma's mouth falls open on a gasp; she looks like she's in pain, but not like she is scared, and this makes no sense to Regina.

 

But while Emma has learned a few things about the concepts of reality and realms and time, she still believes _dead is dead_ and she's more worried about Regina who will find herself with one foot in the grave for another 28 years, and is that not the true curse of someone still breathing?

 

Then there's _I love you_ and _I'm sorry_ and a squeeze and nothing. No longer Emma. Nothing.

 

28 years later there's Henry returning and Regina has to look again and again through tears because it can't be. _Dead is dead_. And why didn't she ever say? And _you're his birth mother_? she asks though she understands this Emma won't comprehend the magnitude of that question. Won't understand _belonging_ and _home_ and _a stranger who is not one_. She won't understand. Yet.

 

"Hi."

**Author's Note:**

> i mean, this started as a much longer fic and then i realized (after over 10000 words, LOVELY) that i'm just not cut out for writing that kind of stuff? so, it became this instead? because the idea itself really appealed to me, but i also have very little patience. 
> 
> you should maybe read this whole thing without taking a breath, because that's sort of how i wrote it. with an ever-growing sense of urgency. 
> 
> also, don't think too hard about the multiverse theory and how it states that every thing you change causes a different timeline to appear with another universe because i did when i came up with this, and it honestly just makes me sad since it means in one universe regina will always be waiting for emma to return home. UR WELCOME.


End file.
